1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mobile terminal provided with a loading means of identification data for identifying a user in use, for example relates to a mobile phone or other portable communication terminal provided with an interface for a exchangeable recording medium for storing the identification data.
2. Description of the Related Art
Some GSM (global system for mobile communications) mobile phones acquire an ID number, a telephone number etc. of a subscriber from a exchangeable IC card referred to as a “subscriber identity module” (SIM). When utilizing a mobile phone, these data loaded from the SIM card are used for authentication that the user of the mobile phone is the legitimate subscriber registered at the carrier. Further, by inserting a different SIM card, it becomes possible to change the telephone number of the mobile phone, so it becomes possible for one mobile phone to be shared by several users or for one telephone number to be used selectively for several mobile phones;
A SIM may also store, in addition to the information for identifying the user, personal information of the user such as a “phone book” of frequently used telephone numbers and communication charges.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2001-156904 discloses a technique concerning expansion of the phone book of a user stored in a SIM card or other exchangeable recording medium.
When several users share a single mobile phone as explained above, the data derived from the usage of each user for example e-mails and the log of incoming/outgoing calls is stored in a non-volatile memory of the mobile phone. In many cases, by operating a user interface of the mobile phone, it is possible to display the stored data of all of the users as for example a list on the display screen.
However, a conventional mobile phone is not provided with a mechanism for displaying visually intelligibly on such a list by which specific user each data was prepared and stored.
The phone disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2001-156904 provides a memory area corresponding to every recording medium attached inside a memory of the phone, and each memory area stores the data of the phone book used when the corresponding recording medium is attached. However, when displaying the list of this phone book on the display, since the mechanism for intelligibly showing the data on the list to the user is not disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2001-156904, it is difficult for each user to select data concerning itself from the list, so there is the disadvantage that the convenience of the user is impaired.
For example, even if the user tries to select mail relating to the currently inserted SIM from the list of received mail, it cannot be identified from the list of received mail displayed on the display screen, so the troublesome operation of for example opening each received mail to check the addressee becomes necessary.
Further, if mistakenly opening the received mail of another user, if only the title, addressee, and other header data of the received mail is received, a request will be transmitted to the mail server to download the mail text of the other user. In this case, the download request is rejected at the mail server, so the operation of the user is interrupted until a notification of error is sent back from the mail server. The same is true when mail of another user with a non-received attached file is erroneously opened. Therefore, the operation is interrupted whenever such a mistake occurs. This is very inconvenient.
Further, the risk becomes higher that a user will erroneously recognize received mail addressed to another user as mail addressed to itself and forward this to another person party.